


i will try (to forgive myself)

by potato_writes



Series: i'm standing right here on (jaime's) side [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blatant Overuse of Italics, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Relationship, Quasi-Ocean's Eleven AU, also among me, chronologically this takes place before part 1 for max confusion among readers, give brienne female friends 2k20, gossip among friends, jaime's not in this but it's almost entirely about him anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potato_writes/pseuds/potato_writes
Summary: Brienne doesn’t need to look at Margaery to know she’s shaking her head, looking disappointed with Brienne and her decisions last night, after that idiotic argument between Jeyne and Jeyne exhausted her so much that she’d just walked out of the warehouse and hadn’t returned until nearly one in the morning, exhausted and exhilarated all at once. She’s not disappointed by Brienne choosing to leave—in fact, she’d mainly been irritated she didn’t make that choice herself when she’d confronted her in the kitchenette that morning, but rather by her decision to come back, or rather, her decision to come back alone and unsatisfied.Those were Margaery’s exact words, actually, about five minutes ago when Brienne finished spilling the whole story to her and Arianne. Apparently, being more reckless than she’s ever been in her entire life still isn’t good enough for Marg, who’s been trying to do what she calls ‘pulling Brienne out of her shell’ ever since they met almost a decade ago.after a late night on the town, brienne must endure the questioning of her teammates and the memory of the man she met the night before.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: i'm standing right here on (jaime's) side [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956802
Comments: 14
Kudos: 52





	i will try (to forgive myself)

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't read part 1 of this series (you should it might make more sense if you do?) then I am here to inform you that this is a quasi-ocean's eleven au that takes the most basic premise of the movie and goes careening off elsewhere with it. chronologically, this takes place before part 1 does, but I'd recommend reading them in order just because and also because I'm not going to lay out all the background of the heist in this one either. I do know what I'm doing though. I swear.
> 
> title from Ghost Quartet again, because my brain is good for one thing and that one thing is storing ghost quartet lyrics for later use. you can also find me on Tumblr as [potatothecat](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/potatothecat), where you can scold me for my cruel and heartless behaviour as a writer.

Brienne doesn’t need to look at Margaery to know she’s shaking her head, looking disappointed with Brienne and her decisions last night, after that _idiotic_ argument between Jeyne and Jeyne exhausted her so much that she’d just walked out of the warehouse and hadn’t returned until nearly one in the morning, exhausted and exhilarated all at once. She’s not disappointed by Brienne choosing to leave—in fact, she’d mainly been irritated she didn’t make that choice herself when she’d confronted her in the kitchenette that morning, but rather by her decision to come back, or rather, her decision to come back alone and unsatisfied. 

Those were Margaery’s exact words, actually, about five minutes ago when Brienne finished spilling the whole story to her and Arianne. Apparently, being more reckless than she’s ever been in her entire life still isn’t good enough for Marg, who’s been trying to do what she calls ‘pulling Brienne out of her shell’ ever since they met almost a decade ago. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” she grumbles, pushing past Margaery to grab the coffee pot and fill her mug up to the brim for the third time this morning. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Nothing wrong?” Margaery rears back, looking indignant, and Brienne barely has enough time to regret ever opening her mouth before her friend launches into a tirade. “Brienne, the guy was clearly interested in you, was practically begging for you to fuck him. And instead of taking him home or going home with him, you…ran away, walked across the city for half the night, and then came back here alone to sit in the kitchen and sulk until morning, when you could have been having sex with a ridiculously attractive guy who’s, by all accounts, insanely into you.”

“When you say ‘by all accounts’, you just mean Brienne’s account, right?” Arianne asks, barely hiding a broad grin that has Brienne groaning and rolling her eyes. “Because I’m not fully certain I trust her account all that much, especially when it comes to people who might be into her.”

“You guys are so mean.”

Margaery and Arianne exchange a look before they both burst into laughter, and Brienne stalks over to the nearest chair and plops down with her coffee, pointedly not looking at either of them. “I’m serious,” she gripes, even though all three of them know how much of a lie that is. “You’re so mean. I don’t even know why I’m friends with you.”

They’re still laughing as Ygritte stomps into the kitchen, hair still tangled and messy from sleep. It’s a marker of how things have changed among their team—at the beginning, no one dared show their face in the morning without being fully prepared for the day ahead. “What’re you two on Brienne about now?” she asks, going straight for the coffee pot and groaning loudly when she sees how little Brienne’s left in it. “I hope you’re ragging on her for drinking all the coffee, or else the conversation’s gonna be about that as soon as I’m awake enough to handle yelling.”

Arianne smirks, sending Brienne’s eyes rolling back into her head as she tries her best to ignore them. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”

She’s ignored, of course. Typical. “So,” Arianne says, clearly relishing every word, “you know how Brienne was the smartest of us all and just up and left when the Jeynes were arguing last night? Well, it turns out she made her way to a bar, where she met a guy.”

Ygritte hums thoughtfully as she begins brewing a second pot of coffee, her eyes glinting with the same keen light as Margaery and Arianne have. “She met a guy, huh? Why isn’t he back here right now, then? Unless you’re hiding him in a closet somewhere?”

Before Ygritte can start poking around in hidden corners, Brienne shakes her head. “I’m not going to take a guy I only met once home, Ygritte. That could derail our entire mission.”

“But you wanted to,” Margaery says in a sing-song voice, darting back when Brienne’s hand flaps in her direction, a half-hearted threat. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You _so_ regret not sleeping with him last night.”

“Not sleeping with who?”

They all jump at Arya’s voice, none of them having heard her sneak up behind them. Their climber and acrobat frowns, putting her hands on her hips and staring them all down with stormy grey eyes. “Seriously, what did Brienne do last night that has you all going after her like this?”

“It’s less what she _did_ ,” Arianne responds with a zeal she really should save for their mission, “and more _who_ she _didn’t_ do. Tell her, Brienne.”

Brienne rolls her eyes again and folds her arms after setting her mug down on a side table. “No. I’m not giving you even more ammunition to make fun of me with.”

Arya raises an eyebrow before moving to drop next to Arianne on the couch opposite Brienne. “Hmm. Before I hop on the judgement train with everyone else, how hot was he? Because if he was into you but not that hot, then I wouldn’t regret it too much. If he _was_ hot, though…”

“Do you not have a sister to talk to about this?” Brienne asks loudly, staring up at the ceiling while hoping her cheeks aren’t flushing _too_ much. “Seriously, there’s no reason to keep ragging on me about this. Yes, he was hot. Yes, he was definitely into me. But it would have been a mistake to sleep with him. No matter how hot or into me he might have been. He was probably drunk, anyways.”

The last statement’s a blatant lie, but none of her friends need to know that. There’d definitely been no drunkenness in those piercing green eyes when he’d leaned into her, slid his hand up her thigh, blatantly propositioned her in a way she wasn’t used to coming from men, especially not men like him. Just as she too had been sober when she’d let him do all of that, welcomed it even. Just as she’d been sober when she’d leaned into him, let her own hand creep up _his_ thigh, at least until her common sense kicked in and she escaped before it went too far, became something she couldn’t come back from.

“When you say he was hot,” Ygritte begins, and Brienne’s forced to bite back another groan, “how hot is _hot_ , exactly? Are we talking Oberyn Martell hot? Rhaegar Targaryen hot? Tywin Lannister’s eldest son hot?”

“Please never call my uncle hot in front of me again,” Arianne mutters with a wince. “It was bad enough hearing it from Ellaria that one time she was really drunk.”

Margaery ignores her, turning all her laser-like focus onto Brienne again. “Well? You haven’t told me either. Spill the details, and then we’ll leave you alone.”

“The…the last one,” she mumbles, her cheeks blazing beneath all their stares. “Definitely the last one.”

Arya’s jaw drops, and Ygritte lets out a long, low whistle. “Damn,” she mutters, shaking her head right as the timer beeps on the coffee machine. “You turned _that_ down?”

Arianne shakes her head as well, looking more skeptical than Ygritte did. “Not that I’m doubting you, but are you sure? The lighting is never that great in bars, and people often look a lot more attractive to you after the fact, better than they would in the actual light of day.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Brienne tells her, and this time she’s not lying. He’d been near god-like under the swirling lights of the bar, his perfect features like a statue of the Warrior come to life. All golden hair and tanned skin, he’d fairly shone with power and lust as he’d looked at her, really looked at her, like he could see the truth she kept deep within for herself and no one else to see. And those eyes of his, those shining green eyes…

She snaps out of her reverie to see them all staring at her, even Margaery’s eyes wide. “Wow,” Arya says slowly, and Brienne’s blush deepens even more. “He really was something, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” Brienne agrees against her will, not daring to look over and see Marg’s knowing gaze fixed on her. “But it was the right choice.” They all roll their eyes simultaneously—which is impressive, honestly, have they been _practicing_ that?—and she glares back at them all one at a time. “It _was_. Stop looking at me like that.”

Arianne shakes her head again, her gaze softening. “I don’t understand,” she says gently, her dark eyes boring into Brienne. “You were attracted to him, he was clearly into you, and it’s not like any of us are going to judge you for having a one-night-stand. I know you wanted to, you admitted to wanting to, so why didn’t you do it?”

How can she answer this? Arianne’s not prodding or teasing for once, and that almost makes it harder, because she can’t lie to her friend, can’t keep brushing off the truth with useless platitudes or evasions of the topic. But she doesn’t want to tell them everything, either, because they _will_ judge her if they know everything, no matter how nonchalant they are about pretty much everything else.

She sighs and glances out the window, avoiding Arianne’s gaze in hopes that she won’t see the untruth revealed in her eyes. “He just…we wouldn’t have worked out. He wasn’t the right kind of guy for me, is all. It’s nothing particularly special or exciting. We just weren’t that compatible.”

This time, she can fairly _hear_ Margaery’s eyes roll. “Brienne, are you serious? From what you told me, you sounded very compatible indeed. No, this is something else, something you don’t want to tell us. Unless…” She trails off before frowning deeply. “I actually can’t think of something to go there. I guess if you weren’t in the mood, but I’m almost completely certain that you were.”

Brienne looks down at her hands before grabbing her mug and gripping it tightly between them. “It’s…it’s complicated, alright? Can we drop it now?”

Arya shrugs and wanders off, presumably to go bother her sister, and Ygritte turns her attention to the coffee pot beside her, but Arianne and Margaery remain intently focused on her. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Arianne asks, reaching out to place a hand on Brienne’s knee. “You seem…rattled, like something bad happened and you don’t want to tell us.”

“He didn’t try to force you into anything, did he?” Margaery asks in a low, dangerous voice, and Brienne shakes her head so quickly she’s briefly worried it might fall off. 

“No! He did nothing I didn’t want him to do. He…he was perfectly considerate and respectful the entire time.”

Not by polite standards, perhaps, but she can still recall his silk-smooth voice rumbling in her ear, asking her permission before he pulled her so close she couldn’t tell where one body ended and the next began. Can still remember the silent question in his eyes, the way he hesitated before every move, waiting to see it she’d push him away, making certain that she was comfortable with everything he did. No, he definitely didn’t force her. Not at all.

Margaery’s shoulders relax and she leans back in her seat. “That’s good. You were being so evasive, and I got worried.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, before draining her mug and setting it back down on the table. “I didn’t mean to concern you. Last night was…it was a lot, and I haven’t really processed everything that happened yet.”

“Fair enough,” Arianne tells her, and Margaery nods next to her. “But did you at least get his name, in case he’s there again and you decide you _do_ want to take him up on his offer? It seems pretty foolish to run off without knowing anything about a guy that interested in you.”

Brienne hesitates, swallowing nervously as she mulls over her words. She _did_ , in fact, get his name, and that’s entirely the problem with the whole scenario. She knows exactly who he is, exactly where to find him again, and that’s precisely why she can never see him again, why she fled so quickly last night from his warm, willing embrace.

“You did!” Margaery exclaims gleefully, reading the answer on her face. “Come on, Bri, just tell us. It can’t be that terrible to give us a name and nothing else.”

She still doesn’t say anything, glancing back and forth between them and biting her lip. They’ll lay off if she tell them his name, or at least they think they will, but doing so will cause far more harm than good, will result in a whole other line of questioning she doesn’t particularly care to think about right now. Besides, there are some parts of last night she wants to keep for herself: the low purr of his voice in her ear, his lips pressed to her skin, those green eyes studying and evaluating her and never once finding her lacking, his name.

“It could be, actually,” she says quietly, her words nearly drowned out by Ygritte banging around in the cabinets behind them. “You only say that because you don’t know what it is.”

Arianne tosses her head, bafflement emerging in her eyes. “I really don’t see how it can be. Unless it was one of our relatives, which would be awkward. Or Tywin Lannister, but he’s not hot and hasn’t been for years.”

“It wasn’t Tywin Lannister,” Brienne says meaningfully, not laughing off the suggestion like they expected her to. Both their heads swivel in her direction, and even Ygritte pauses in the kitchenette as she takes a deep breath and explains, “It was his son. The elder one. Jaime.”

The entire room goes still, and she belatedly realizes that the rest of the team has gathered in the doorway, listening to her every word. “Jaime Lannister,” Shae says slowly, staring at Brienne as if she can’t believe what she’s just heard. “You were propositioned by and nearly hooked up with _Jaime Lannister_.”

Brienne draws in a deep breath and nods once, sharply, feeling the heavy weight of everyone’s eyes on her. “Yes.”

Margaery leans back in her seat some more, her eyes as wide as Brienne’s ever seen them, glancing over at Arianne before slowly returning her gaze to Brienne. “Shit,” she says at last, the only thing there really is to say after a revelation like that. 

_Yeah, shit is right. How are you going to explain your way out of this one, Brienne?_

**Author's Note:**

> in case you couldn't tell, I'm really enjoying having two characters with the same name in this fic. there are so many terrible jokes I can make regarding that. 
> 
> what happened at the bar will be told in a later instalment. not the next one, though, and probably not the one after that either. I say probably, but I already know the answer.
> 
> the next instalment will come at some point. if uni stops kicking my ass for a little while, it might even be fairly soon.


End file.
